


(There's A Word In This World That Is) Dangerous

by Glowingchaos



Category: Elon Musk RPF, SpaceX, Tesla - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Genderbending, I'm Going to Hell, Illeya Is Essentially A Girl Elon, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 05:54:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5363897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glowingchaos/pseuds/Glowingchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Running two companies at 26 sounds impossible, but Illeya Montelow is doing it. Until she's overworked herself nearly to death and needs to find a shrink to keep her from going overboard. There's a thunderous distraction brewing in the distance that she doesn't need.<br/>An RPF AU genderbend. (What the hell am I doing?)<br/>(I am in no way affiliated with Musk.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains non-graphic/poetic, but evocative depictions of sexual content. As stated in the summary, I mean no disrespect (or even objectification) of the source material/ real person. This is purely fiction, and I'd like to stress that I wrote this chapter separately as sort-of-poetry with no thought of Musk before I began writing the later chapters.

[Illeya POV]

     There's a word that people say to describe the bond between two people who spend their nights pressed close together, who fix each other when they're broken. That word is _dangerous_ , so that word was never said. But it was still a deep connection, and neither of us wanted to test how deep it really was. We wanted to stay lonely. It was how we both worked.

     There were nights that were feral, hands vibrating with adrenaline and backs slamming into walls and onto beds. Kisses and bites were indistinguishable in a frenzy that was no dance between souls, but a chaotic mash of physicality, ridding ourselves of the day's, week's, month's stresses. While I'd daydreamed of such things long ago, the _realness_ of one body and another being pressed together with such electricity always grounded me in reality far more than the cotton-cloud theories I'd tried to imagine. It was, amazing. But it wasn't my favorite.

     My favorite was the quiet, the worship. Those were the nights that felt closest to the never-spoken word, his hands sliding reverently over every inch, no preference over the curves that I prided or the lines that I hated. Every single one was so, so beautiful in his eyes that saw me as a goddess, under his hands that touched me and felt sin in tarnishing a deity, on his lips that spoke of the awe felt that I was a real person, there on those nights. It was closer to anyone than I'd ever felt before. Part of me was scared of those nights, when even from across the room he felt closer than any other people in my life. Because getting that close was _dangerous_.

     We agreed that to say that word applied to us was _dangerous_ , to think like that was _dangerous_. It just helped us function better, we could do more when we're whole, when we fixed each other at the end of the day. But I'd be lying if I said that word wasn't ready to leap off my tongue like a raging animal out of a cage. Even with the burning sun in my chest, I kept quiet as we held each other after our illicit encounters. Those emotions, the give that it would create, would never pass in my star-forged world.

     I just hope I'm the only one feeling like that, because it helps to keep our distance when I'm desperately tangled in all of the emotions. We've forbidden ourselves to think of that word anymore. It helps to just keep working. Because I only do it to keep working.

 


	2. A Whirlwind Of A Woman

[Luke's POV]

     I heard her shoes stomp up to the door before I even knew she was coming over. She stabbed the key into the lock and let herself in as I sat on the couch.

     “Long days at work,” she supplied, still thinking about calculations of how to win over the world. I hummed, stood, and walked toward her with open arms.*

     She walked into my arms and kissed me. It was strange knowing _that word_ could never come up, but I felt it even so, the complete openness, the reverence of her that crossed my mind every time we brushed by each other. It was a slow day, full of quiet and reverence. My hands skimming across her skin, pecking across her shoulders, along her neck. I knew how tired and stressed she was through the way she leaned into me, the hum of approval she gave when I picked her up and popped her back in the process. Even though I seemed to be improving her situation, she placed a hand on my shoulder and gently separated us.

     “I’d like to… but I’m feeling open. None of the fun stuff, sorry. It’d be nice of you to drop off something to eat on the bed stand in the morning, though. I have to sleep the feeling off.”

     Oh, god, she felt _that word_ too, and as much as I wanted to blurt it out, we had already made a pact to keep our distance. I kissed her lightly on her neck and carried her to the one bed in the apartment. I left her to fall asleep as I decompressed with online driveling, stoic-faced and no emotion leaking. It was two hours before I could go back, could face the sleeping goddess in my bed. I didn’t do anything, didn’t even pull her into my arms, just faced my back to her and fell asleep. Because she was only near me to keep working.

     Yeah, I was ‘angry’, but it wasn’t justified. It’d wear off in a few days and we’d go back to being each other’s decompression outlets, being something with benefits because we couldn’t simply say we were friends, but we would never say that word.

     She ran companies. Plural. She didn’t need a l*ver. She needed an outlet for the physical drives of her flesh and the stress levels of her brain, and I was there. I was the closest person to her, and she was still miles away. A secondary concern to knowledge, which was the only thing she would ever use that word for. I told people what to do, gave them directions, but she _ran_ the companies. She grabbed coders and engineers by the collar and yelled at them until froth cornered her lips when they'd failed. She directed the money, and directed it effectively in ways that we didn't realize until it kicked in months later and saved our asses. She could tear employees apart, and she could rally them for war. And by god, did she believe it was war. A pioneer like her could never have gotten anywhere without it.

     But sometimes it killed her.

     Sometimes it meant marks from her makeshift ‘motivators’, burns from direct-current shocks to keep her on track, when she’d been awake three days already and needed another two of aggressive work. Sometimes it meant bruises on her skin where she'd pinch and twist to stay alert and keep from sleeping standing up. Sometimes it meant a third of her office piled with 5-Hour Energy Capsules and another half with empty ones. Sometimes it meant puking when she hadn't eaten in so long and had been running on just caffeine and mental drive. (Those were the times I forced her to stop by the hospital for a few days to get back up to baseline. She hated me for that.) And sometimes it meant dropping by my apartment at one in the morning and taking over my bed.

     She slept until 9 in the morning, a solid 8 hours, showered the second she woke up, and greeted me with a “Stable mental processes. Not too open anymore. You up for the norm or should I leave?” as she chugged her coffee.

     That's the thing about her, everything was fast. She drank fast, ate fast, left fast, worked fast. And today, she screwed fast. Just a basic biological reset to keep her from going crazier than she already was working 25 hours a day.**

     What a whirlwind. What a woman. I couldn't blame her for much, but I could catch her a few feet from death and destruction and show her what she was about to step into. And a few times, she's shown me the path she's carving. Through the flames and the tests of mettle, a hard-forged path that she knew with her heart was workable, and if only these stupid legal monkeys could see what she was doing, then maybe, maybe she could get it done.

     She was a creature of logic molded by dreams. Graced by her stubbornness as much as she was damned by it. And by every deity in the history of mankind, I couldn't get enough of her.

     There was no way she was healthy, sure. She'd hired me to curb that habit and it sort of snowballed into the most intimate yet l***less relationship-ish thing I've ever had.

     But how it started… that's a story for another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *In Musk's biography, he'd work days on end at his office coding. He and the others working for the startup company lived and slept in the tiny place they had bought while creating Zip2.  
> ** I laughed my ass off when in his bio (I don't have it at the moment so I don't know who said it), someone said something along the lines of "The man does everything fast. He even pees fast. 3 seconds, like a damn fire hydrant." I don't know why but I can't stay calm and not laugh when I read that.


	3. Overkill

     I peeled my head off my desk to stare at the man- men? No, a single man, just seeing double from the lack of sleep- standing in front of my desk with a thin, legal-looking file held by his side. What a contrast from my messy bun that probably fell apart in my impromptu sleep, drool on my keyboard, sweatpants, and bleary-eyed confusion.

     “You have a threat to sue for your Model E name, Ms. Montelow. Apologies for interrupting your… nap,” he offered, his voice as highbrow as his suit.

     “Which… company?” I slurred, shuffling around trying to find a clock to see how much time I wasted asleep. _11:20_ in the morning? I'd slept a full 9 hours and wasted so much work. AND my brain had to take at least an hour to get back up to speed. I groaned.*

     “Ford,” he replied succinctly, and I held my face in my hands, trying to function.

     “Call it something else in the mean time, maybe 3 in a stylistic manner, and _please_ tell Ford they're killing sex,” I offered. We'd already produced Model S and Model X cars, it was only appropriate.**

    “Not as a legal professional, but rather as a human being,” he began, “you need help. You're working yourself to death, and you should stay around a few more years to see your company grow.”

     He then walked out of my office.

     I stood there for a few seconds, blinking, thinking…

     I looked back at my clock, and over to the calendar. It hadn't been 9 hours. It had been _a_ _day_ and 9 hours. I didn't remember having all these bottles of 5 hour energy scattered all over my floor. There were cups from Starbucks and take out boxes from a buffet that I hadn't cleaned up for eight days. I'd sat coding and planning, having only gotten up to piss out the pure caffeine I'd been drinking for weeks. I don't think I'd eaten in three days, since I'd gone to a buffet and stocked up when I'd brought back those Starbucks cups. I hadn't showered in… four? Five days?

     I bolted back to my computer and opened a browser. Local Psychology College Degrees. Psychology Colleges. Professors. Phone Numbers. UCLA.

     “Professor Koeman at UCLA, Psychology Division. How may I help?” I didn't pay attention to her peppy open voice and instead answered in the least frantic voice I could manage.

      “Yes, I'd like a list of all your graduating students, top 15%.”

     “Who are you?”

 

     I skimmed through files of potential graduates, threw out 'stably employed', honed in on nutritionist minors, and found only four that might work. I called them up, shaky-handed, and explained my proposal: someone to keep me from going over the edge while I was running two huge businesses. One hung up right on the spot (how rude), and one politely declined, but the other two decided to come in and analyze my offer.

     I thanked them so much I might have scared them. I then grabbed the PA system and announced:

     “Dearest employees, this is your CEO, Montelow speaking. Unless you've knuckled down and are in the midst of an engineer's high, take the day off. I don't expect my employees to work any more than I do, and since I'm pretty sure I should have been checked into a hospital since yesterday, I've decided that there's a need for a rare day off. Don't expect any more than this.” I hung up and hobbled to the nearest person I could find, prompting them to take me to a doctor or at least call an ambulance.***

     Two grueling days passed before I could get away from that workless place and set up my interviews for my surveyor. Or, companion. Whatever.

     The first one that came in, a bright, compassionate blonde, immediately recommended a rehabilitation center and Narcotics Anonymous meetings because she thought I was doing cocaine.

     “Misdiagnosis and snap decision to treatment. Be glad it's an interview or you'd be fired already. Thank you for your time, send the other one in,” I snapped at her. She tightened her suit-jacket, pursed her lips in a half-smile that didn't hide her contempt one bit, and left the room.

     “Tell me about yourself,” the  ~~handsome~~ man prompted once I had spoken aloud to convey I was paying attention to him.

     “I run two and a half companies and the only drug I consume is caffeine- don't listen to that girl that I sent off. 'Cocaine' my ass. Anyways, I need someone to make sure that I don't die overworking myself but that will let me work myself pretty damn hard. Ask questions from that baseline, it'll make the whole thing a lot quicker,” I rapidly answered.

     "Why haven't you allowed yourself to back off a bit? Do you think there's an underlying reason you're pushing yourself so hard?" he asked, eyes narrowing ever slightly, head tilting just a tick to the side as he focused in on me.

     "It's important to me. I don't ever give up. I mean, I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.**** I'm changing the world, and I've always put in 110%," I replied easily.

     "But if I take the job, you'll listen to me when I say to back off?" he questioned, a tinge of incredulousness in his voice.

     "If it means I won't die, you can even start in an hour."

     "That's enough time to overwork yourself already. How about 30 minutes?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * In an AMA on Reddit, Elon said he sleeps 6h a night. Any less and he can't function at full capacity, any more and he's wasting time.  
> ** Ford really did threaten to sue for the name 'Model E'. And Elon really did respond by saying Ford was killing sex. (Bio)  
> *** I modeled this after his near-death with malaria. Again, I don't have the bio with me, so I can't say which country it was in. (Bio)  
> **** I'm running out of a reasonable number of asterisks. From the "I don't give up" to the asterisks, this is an actual quote, but related to SpaceX. Also, when he was young, he rode a bike 16-ish miles up a really steep hill with a group of marathon bikers, while he wasn't even in shape. He arrived 15 minutes after they had reached the top (they were overworked and exhausted) purple-faced and dripping sweat. He hadn't stopped the entire time, even though he promptly puked when he got off his bike. The determination the man has is scary. (Bio)


End file.
